I met my conversation partner,
Denily, for the first time on Thursday. It was a great experience to just sit
down and learn about another person and culture for an hour. Denily is from
Venezuela and has worked at a news-station there for about 5 years after
college in her hometown. She decided to come to TCU to learn English for job
security and to gain another skill for use in her job.
It was very interesting talking to
someone from a completely different culture and hearing some of her reactions
to American culture. One of my first impressions was that Denily speaks English
very well, practically flawlessly. When I asked her how long she had been in
the U.S., she looked at the date and casually said, “almost four months”. I was
impressed to say the least. She had little prior training in English before she
came to TCU, other than basic knowledge and an English course at one time, and was already speaking smoothly and
fluently.
One part of our conversation that
was most interesting to me was our discussion of language. We first talked for
a while about idioms. Some idioms translated perfectly from one language to the
other, while others did not. In Venezuela, they have the phrase,
“El
loro viejo no aprende a hablar,” which translates, “The old parrot cannot learn
to speak.” This idiom is very similar to our idiom, “you can’t teach an old dog
new tricks.” While the actual words were different, they both communicated the same
idea. On the other hand, the Spanish phrase, “hablar por los codos,” does not
translate to English well, as it means, “to talk through the elbows,” or to
talk a lot. It was interesting exchanging things like this. I also discovered
that it is difficult for many Spanish speakers to pronounce words with the ‘th’
or ‘thr’ consonant combination. It was something I didn’t really think of as
being difficult, but looking back, I can remember being 5 years old and saying
something costs “free dollars” instead of “three”, so I guess I can relate.
Our first meeting was fun and
enlightening. We are planning on meeting again a week from today, so stay
tuned!
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